作者：董欣
　　【Abstract】Discourse Marker have been a topic of research for decades under many different names. The present paper uses the methodology of relevance theory and presents an analysis of the functions of DM “so” with the transcript of 24 Chinese students’ in-class presentation in the 2018 Stylistics class in Central China Normal University with the help of Antconc.
　　【Key words】Discourse Marker; so; relevance theory; procedural meaning
　　1. Introduction
　　There is a type of linguistic elements in people’s spoken language which do not change the semantic function of the sentence but with high frequency. They can act as markers to exerts a unique discourse function and help the understanding of the information contained. They are lexical expressions like you know， I mean， well， and， so， etc. that are called Discourse Makers.
　　Although these words mentioned above seem to be generally regarded as DM in English， there is not a universally accepted definition of it. Despite that， it is widely acknowledged that DM mainly take pragmatic functions and should be viewed as a portion of the discourse information， integrally affecting the construction and interpretation of the discourse.Blakemore （2002）， held that DM signal a semantic relationship between utterances， was interested in only those which contained procedural meaning as opposed to conceptual meaning （Fraser， 1990）. Therefore， the most prominent feature of DM is its absence in altering the meaning.
　　Since the 1980s， there are two main theories in the research of DM： the Coherence Theory represented by Schffrin and the Relevance Theory represented by Blakemore （Yu Kun， 2018）. According to Blackmore （2003）， conceptual meaning and procedural meaning can be used to decode DM. Blakemore thinks that the purpose of studying DM is to describe how DM contribute to the understanding. Therefore， she believes that the use of relevance theory makes it easier to explain the psychological processes of both parties in the understanding of discourse. Similarly，， she holds that DM do not affect semantic content but helps the listener to recognize the reasoning in the conversation by restricting the expression of the procedure meaning.
　　This paper concentrates the pragmatic functions of an individual DM “so”.
　　2. “So” as a DM in Chinese students’ Presentation
　　2.1 Research Object
　　Although researchers do not agree what falls under DM， it is accepted that they can be identified with two generally used criteria. First， if the DM is removed from the utterance， the semantic relationship between the elements remains the same. The second criterion is that without it， the grammaticality of the utterance must still be intact. （Fuller， 2003）